WHY NOT IDAHO?

Road Trip 2002

Day 5

For once, we didn't face a long drive to our first destination.  For once, we were right where we wanted to be when we were greeted with the harsh sun of early  morning.  Of course, where we wanted to be happened to be in the middle of nowhere.  We had a number of  long walks ahead of us, and all we had to eat was a big ole box of fairly unhealthy and entirely nutritionally incomplete road snacks.

What's a girl to do?

Why, Vienna Sausages and Coke, of course!

Breakfast of champions!

Well, Bill didn't quite agree....

What does a bitter, hung-over alien know anyway?

We, however, were more than ready to explore The Strangest 75 Square Miles in North America (bring a flashlight).

And strange it was.

The Craters of The Moon National Monument is a gigantic lava field smack dab in the middle of Idaho.

It's actually over 600 square miles in area.

And quite pretty.

If not a little strange....

One of the little hikes you could take was something called "The Devil's Orchard."  It was dubbed such after a preacher toured the site and said it was a garden fit for the Devil himself.

You had to hike along a paved path, and all along the way were little signs describing how evil people were, walking off the path, destroying some of the rocks, how pollution was killing the mold that was growing on the rocks, how park rangers of the past had ruined regrowth by cutting down what they thought were parasites on the dead trees.

No one was safe from the walk of shame.

LOOK!  LOOK UPON THE EVIL!!!!

EVIL!!!

Okay, so they were a little nicer than that, but the sentiment was there.

But there were some great trees!  I fell in love with the trees.

Driving a little further, through even more of the massive lava field,

We made our way up to the top of one of the craters.

It was so deep and the lava held temperature so well, that there was snow visible all year.

EVEN IN THE MIDDLE OF AUGUST!

But we still wondered...  Why the flashlight?

Well, we soon found out.

The Craters of the Moon offers a handful of caves to explore.

The walk was rarely easy....

And sometimes a little dangerous....

But the views were amazing...

We were told by a rather precocious little boy who had entered the cave before us that this is Pyrite, more commonly known as fool's gold.  It was kinda dark, and it showed up pretty silvery on the picture, but as we all know, twelve year olds are never wrong.

It was rather cold as well... that mist you see is my sister's breath.

Somewhere along the way, we lost track of Bill.

Luckily, the park is fairly well organized, and we soon found our wayward alien sunning himself on what he called "familiar terrain."

The itch of why you needed a flashlight in Idaho finally scratched, we were off once again!

And being halfway through the trip, it was time to get some more cash....  We found a little town with a bank (trust me, there are a lot of little towns in Idaho...  Not all of them have  a restaurant, or a gas station, even fewer have a bank.) 

As we drove into town, we saw a small mountain on the horizon with numbers covering the face. 

"Odd," we thought to ourselves.

We pulled up to the bank, dutifully looking for an ATM.

We saw none.

"It must be inside," we thought.

Nope.

They actually had tellers!!!!

REAL PEOPLE!!!!

We stood in line as the tellers called to the people in line in front of us by their  first names.  Sue looked a little confused when she called us to her window.  WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?

But it didn't take her long to warm up to those strangers from California.  She even told us her own "funny" story about The Craters of the Moon.   I don't quite remember the whole thing, but it had something to do with a girl scout troop and foot prints painted on the sidewalk.

I took the opportunity to ask her about the numbers on the mountain.  Turns out, each year, the senior class goes up there and paints their graduation year on a rock face.  She was very disappointed that they also got drunk when they did it, even more disappointed when I said "Of course they do!!!  They're teenagers!"

"Well I guess that makes them normal," she muttered under her breath as we left the building...

And with that, we were on our way to our turn around point.

BF's mom lives in Montana.  Only a few hundred miles away...

We braved boring scenery!

More bug attacks!

And brush fires.

Seriously, we drove through a brush fire.

One guy pulled over, grabbed his shovel, and went to help out.

We, however...

We took pictures....

We skirted Wyoming on our way up to Montana.  At one point, as we were driving, I was, as the passenger, in Idaho while my sister, as the driver, was sitting in Wyoming.

It was a beautiful drive...

BF's mom lives in an old barn that has been relocated and renovated.  You can see it if you look closely in the picture below.

We arrived, and she introduced us to the herd of seven wild horses that ran her land.

A familiar whistle and a bowl of grain brought them running.

She took us on a tour of the back forty.

It was AMAZINGLY BEAUTIFUL!

Out there, practically in the middle of nowhere, wild horses walked nearby while the dogs frolicked in the sage brush...

Sis loved the horses, and they seemed to take a shine to her as well...

She was our little horse whisperer...

After a delicious dinner of Buffalo burgers and fresh salad, we retired to a real bed, with real sheets.

I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the real pillow.

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